


down all your darkest roads

by kittyyzma



Category: Euphoria (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Everyone has superpowers, Multi, Nate/Maddy Lasts For Two Seconds, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rue Needs A Hug, Slow Burn Rue/Nate, Tags Are Hard, Underage Drug Use, WIP, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2020-10-19 19:07:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20662235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittyyzma/pseuds/kittyyzma
Summary: Rue’s self medicating nearly killed her. After her father died, it was the worst it ever got. And when she nearly dies from an overdose she’s forced to face an even bigger, life changing event: she’s a super.—The Sky High AU no one asked for—HBO Style





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I don’t know. 
> 
> But just gonna say, I don’t own any of the recognizable characters mentioned. I’m broke.

Rue Bennett was used to being a  _ weirdo _ . 

In and out of mental health institutions to help with her addictions, she quickly learned it was not okay to need help. At the age of 16, it had gotten to be the worst it has ever been. And she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to get over the shame of her sister finding her choking on her own vomit, laid out on the floor in her bedroom. The image is embedded in her sister Gia’s already overly impressionable brain—Rue knows she’ll never live it down. Her mother won’t let it rest. She expected nothing less. 

She can hear the heavy echo of disappointment and disapproval, even when her mother doesn’t speak. It’s deafening and a stark reminder of why she’d been self medicating. The teen had just wanted it to be quiet. Just  _ quiet.  _

Now, she’s being transferred to a new school. Her new  _ skills  _ as it’s been categorized, are developing nicely. And with them, she needs different curriculum, along with an entire community of students. She’s a  _ super.  _ And it’s the exact opposite of what she needs in order to have some  _ semblance  _ of a life. They’re in the middle of moving, the one school in state being upstate, the commute everyday would bleed them dry. 

It’s a fresh start, something they need now that her father’s untimely passing has had some time to fester. They see him, feel him in every room of the old house. 

Her mother has too much on her plate, now that she has to figure out how they’re going to make the necessary adjustments it’s going to take for a smooth move—and Rue’s powers. Gia is changing schools too, and she’s not happy about that happening right now, but she’s dealing; better than all of them are dealing, without verbal complaint. But her thoughts are loud. 

The addictions, the problems were normal in comparison to what Rue is now. But at least she knows that she’s not going absolutely crazy. Gia thinks the powers are cool—it’s not going to last for long—but her mother hasn’t really addressed that Rue can hear their thoughts,  _ everyone’s _ thoughts, and she can move things with her mind. Gia wants powers of her own, and Rue playfully pushes her away as she asks: “When am I gonna get mine?” 

“We can trade,” Rue says, shrugging. “If we could, I really would.” Gia hugs her despite her disappointment, happy that she’s doing better. Rue kisses her forehead, while she still can. Over the summer, Gia grew quite a bit, starting to catch up to to Rue who stands at 5’10. “ _ Brat _ .” 

“ _ Jerk _ ,” Gia smiles, burying her face in her sister’s neck while their mother stands at the door, watching them. 

For a moment, they’re just her girls. Rue finds her there, eyes wet with emotion and shame. 

She’s gone through rounds of evaluations, integrated into a world a select few are rarely accepted into this late in their lives. It’s supposed to remain a secretive world;  _ normies  _ are never faced with. Heroes and villains are of a world Rue has never wanted to be a part of. She’s heard the whispers kids made in school when someone was even suspected of being too different. And even by then, she’d been facing crippling anxiety by then anyway. She was already considered a freak—simply because she could barely interact with kids her age without wanting to cry. The constant worry was her friend. 

Rue remembers a girl from her 8th grade class nearly setting the entire west wing of her middle school on fire. It was in all the papers, on every news channel. She determined then, that she didn’t want to be one of them—she never saw that kid again. 

She’d thought she was safe, once she turned 15 and her powers didn’t set in. After extensive googling through the years, she discovered that most Supers came into their powers once they hit puberty. Well once she hit her growth spurt, and had her first period, she’d sighed in relief. By then, her father’s cancer had taken on a life of its own—slowly killing him and the hope in their lives—she had to focus on taking care of him once the nurses became too expensive, doing nothing, and the end was drawing near. 

Waking up in the morning her father died was excruciating, for more than one reason. She’d already started experimentally dabbling with her father’s painkillers. But when she realized, she could hear her mother’s worry—her dad had gotten worse over night and no one bothered to tell her and Gia—fear curdled in her and sent her crashing to the floor in the hallway. 

A year later she was unable to make it through the day outside of a haze. And by the end of the week, she was pushing it too far, until her sister was the one suffering along with her. She doesn’t remember any of it; punished in other ways it seems. 

She should feel lucky, apparently. 

_ “You’re incredibly fortunate, Miss Bennett,” the lead doctor handling her transition, Dr. Aina, says to her. She folds her hands on the end table in the examination room while they go over her history. “I’ve seen opioids react terribly with other abilities. Repression was the best you could have hoped for—it’s not good, but the alternative was that you’d die.”  _

_ Rue looks down at her socked feet, hands folded between her thighs sitting on her gown. She doesn’t feel anything at the doctor’s words, not even curious as to why she’d gotten  _ ** _lucky _ ** _ as he’d put it. She didn’t feel lucky; her father was still dead, and she felt like a monster because what she’d been worried about was being some kind of psychic.  _

_ “Thank you Dr.,” Leslie, her mother, cuts in, from where she sits in the corner of the room, hugging her purse. She took off the morning, but she’s still in her scrubs, prepared to just drop her off at home and head to work. “If that’s all… I really have to head to work.”  _

_ Dr. Aina looks at her, stunned momentarily but collects herself. But she is disappointed, and Rue can’t even find it in herself to be angry when the doctor thinks her mother is being selfishly unsupportive.  _

_ “I’d like to run a few more tests, see how she does with the exercises. We’ll talk about the changes—“  _

_ “Do I have to be here? She’s 17 now,” Leslie says. She doesn’t sound upset, just desperate for escape. She hasn’t considered that Rue can read it.  _

_ Aina nods once, gesturing to a pile of folded clothes for Rue to slip into while the doc takes her mother out into the hallway.  _

_ Rue prepares to hear yelling, but their conversation is quiet and she has to really tune in to hear. It requires a control she doesn’t have yet and she just ends up overextended—every voice in the area floods into her head.  _

_ The doctor finds her curled into a ball shaking her head as she tries to will it to stop.  _

_ Her mother had left.  _

  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rue kind of, sort of... still has no control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still doing this apparently.

Benzos have become her best friend again. And she’d found that a certain dosage didn’t really make her high, it just made it quiet. And she’d lay there contemplating just how weird her life has turned out to be in the midst of her addiction. 

Her _ rehab _had been useless really. She still lacked a solid grasp on her telepathy, and the idea that her abilities would start to expand really scares the shit out of her. And if she doesn’t get a handle on it soon, she’s going to lose her mind—end up right back on the funny-farm for another six months. 

But it was quiet, when Fezco came around and supplied her habit. The ride on her bike is a bit longer, now that her mother’s moved her and her sister into a community with a super-school bus route. (She’s making it work, kind of. Her mother just thought she’d made some friends at orientation and that it was good for her to get out a little in the new neighborhood.)

She’s not sure what really takes her back to drugs, the habit was pretty much broken, when she left Dr. Aina. But the depression is still there. She hasn’t dealt with her father’s death, nor the life altering effects being _ gifted _ brings. And the first night she’d been home? She picked up a conversation from down the street. 

Someone else’s voice is always circling the near recesses of her consciousness. And she finds it’s easier to hold them off when she’s out of it. But she can’t be drugged today or she’ll run the risk of being the first kid to die in gym class because they were high during the sorting exercise. 

Like her, there was a new girl. Jules. She can fly. She sprouts, white, feathery wings; It’s pretty damn cool, quite the transformation. Along with her wings, she has a sonic scream, it could probably take the school down. She doesn’t fly to school, because she enjoys the bus. Doesn’t make sense to anyone else but her. She’d warned Rue, having done research upon coming to school. She wasn’t just discovering her powers, but flew under the radar until someone her mother used to work with outed them. It was a big hoopla, which Rue missed on the news. 

They were being sorted. 

Rue and Jules were spending a lot of time together. And giddily, Rue realized Jules was okay with her uncanny ability to sneak into her head. Though she was helping her, every day they spent together, they worked on control. Jules wasn’t behind, Rue knew it. But she didn’t mind being a crutch. Her control wasn’t slipping as frequently, but it took more energy and thought than it should. 

Yesterday, her mother had come home with a few pamphlets for young people first getting their powers. The reading level is so low, it’s almost insulting. Rue is about 4 years behind the curve so it makes sense. First step is _ celebrating, _ apparently. Not many people are gifted, as the books explain. In the state, there’s only a need for _ one _super high school, so Rue supposes they are a small community. 

She rolls onto her side as she thinks of the classifications. She’s a psionic, which means—funnily— she is among the gifted who are likely to become villainous characters upon maturation. Without the proper development, her powers could literally drive her insane. So that’s fun. Drug use not recommended. She rates this turn of events two stars. The irony is not lost on her. It’s been helpful and relieving to discover that her bouts of anxiety and depression were just her body’s way of trying to figure shit out— it still pisses her off though. 

Rue stares at her alarm clock, swallowing thickly as she takes far too long to read what time it is on the analog. She needs to get up, and when she finally does, it’s almost as if her world is in slow motion. 

Gia knocks on her door and pops her head in when she’s half dressed, getting ready to emerge from her room. “Morning...Mom wants to know if you havin’ breakfast with us.” 

“I’m gonna be late.” Rue says, “And we’re uh...I have to go.” They’re getting put into one of two categories today, and she can’t miss it or they’ll call home and she rather not have that conversation with her mother. She hasn’t been drug tested since her first night home. It’s been two weeks. She’s known this test is coming. It’s the first milestone of the year and sets the course for the rest of the semester. She’ll have a partner for gym, and hopefully make a new friend. When she decided that was a good thing, she didn’t know. But the isolation thing hasn't been working anyway. And Jules isn’t _ always _ around _ . _They really only have lunch and gym together. Most of their time is spent together after school because they’re on the same bus route. 

“What are you looking at me like that for?” 

“Huh?” Rue asks, Gia’s brow is quirked at her. “Sorry. Just thinking. Outta the way.” She says, gently pushing her sister out of her path to the bathroom.

_ You’re so rude. _

“I heard that.” Rue looks at her sister, eyes squinted. 

“Sorry.” Her sister actually does look apologetic. 

She manages to get out the door without a fight from her mother, who simply thinks her worst but doesn’t say it. Rue licks her lips and draws the door shut behind herself. 

The walk to the bus stop is… hard. Everything is so loud, but it doesn’t bring her to her knees. It would have when she was first detoxing. Withdrawal was a bitch. Benzo detox...sucks, just like, in general. 

“Hey,” Jules says. 

“You’re worried,” Rue says instead, responding to her friend’s previous thoughts. More kids are starting to appear, and it’s getting more difficult to shut them out. But she thinks of Jules, focusing on Jules. Just Jules. 

The leggy blonde, smirks, still impressed by her new friends abilities. “I uh, I just don’t wanna be a sidekick.” 

“You can literally fly through the air, I think you’re good.” 

“And you?” Jules laughs, “You can read minds.” 

“That’s not really hero material without another ability. It’s not a physical thing.” Rue shrugs. The bus rolls to the stop, and she takes a deep breath, blocking out the additional voices that sound off. She looks to a kid named Tim. He’s worried about the test too. He’s a brainy, from what she can tell. She’s not really sure how that’s a superpower but...he got in anyway. But he’s _ worried. _

Before it all gets out of hand, she builds up a wall in her head, focusing on shutting it out. Jules places her hand in hers and gives it a squeeze. 

“I mean, you don’t really know right? If that’s it? You’re still figuring yourself out.” Jules shrugs, not unmindful as they board. 

“I hope this is the most of it,” Rue admits, she can’t handle another level, another layer of weird. She knows the school preaches acceptance, of others and of ones own abilities. But everyone else has had their entire pubescent years preparing for this— neither of her parents were powerful. 

When they sit, Rue asks her how her weekend was, hoping to focus on her walls and also processing words at the same time. It was easier in the looney bin. The doctors had the tech to make it work. They brace for takeoff right before Jules laughs, and answers. 

“Pretty good. My dad is still uh, trying to get as much out of me as he can.” 

“Really?” Rue asks, “my mom doesn’t ask at all.” 

Jules gives her a sympathetic smile, just as Rue hears the silent apology. She curses herself for not being strong enough. She blames herself because...hasn’t she done that to herself? 

She’s been so full of anti anxiety medications that could potentially kill her for overloading her system, she’s cut herself off from a part of her own brain. And right now, sober, she feels the threat of anxiety and _ telepathy _. It should be cool, Jules keeps telling her it’s cool, but all she wants is to stop being afraid of her own brain. 

Her hands shake from nerves and her heart rate is scary high. She hasn’t gone without a drug in her system for a while. Considering how much she’s ingested since breaking her sobriety? This is awful. 

Everyone on the bus is too loud, aloud and mentally._ Jimmy who sits in front can fuckin talk to animals spent all weekend at an animal shelter and he’s thinking about it, fondly, but loudly. _

_Patricia, who can heat water molecules in things with her mind(which isn’t as cool as heating an entire thing just...entirely)? Had a really hot dream about the guy, Dre, who can run really fuckin fast. His friend Stretch? Stretches. And he’s thinking about...pizza? _

Rue is losing it while they land at school, sweat collecting in her hairline as she bows forward. She really wants to reach into her bag and down something. But she can’t. She can’t or she’s going to fail that stupid test end up in hero support and then her mother _ will _ know she’s using again. Telepathy is definitely a hero gift—she read it in the pamphlets. 

And despite her best efforts to hide it, she doesn’t want to be a loser around here. She was basically nonexistent around the normal kids. But here, her story has already spread. It’s not a secret that her parents were _ plain _ or that her father died from cancer. _ Or _that she was in rehab. Also it’s hard to hide that no one at school knew her from middle school, when she should have been showing signs of powers. 

The only other person who got talked about as much as her was fuckin Nate Jacobs. And he was the school's resident soon-to-be villain. He’d get to make the choice by graduation next year. 

He was a full blown elementalist, with a propensity for his pyrokinesis. He started there and his abilities grew over the years. He has the most control over his gift in the school. But he’s known for his issues with rage. The teachers just let that be a sign he will go to the side villainy when he graduates. Rue doesn’t understand it. But he’s terrifying. His girlfriend Maddy seems woefully ill prepared to deal with him. But she’s heard they’re not as happy as she would have everyone believe. She’s a replicator, with enhanced dexterity. If you use your power on her, she can copy it with scary accuracy and ability. Plus, she’s really bendy. Everyone is pretty sure they know why that relationship has made it this far. He doesn’t seem to even really like her past grabbing her ass in the hallway. But Maddy lives for the attention that comes with being with him.

More interesting than Rue, is Cassie Howard. She can duplicate herself. Rue grew up with her little sister Lexi Howard and has taken advantage of the fact that the girl is clean as a whistle. And human apparently. Cassie happily embraced her on the first day of school, but they haven’t interacted much since then. Despite being labeled the It girls, Rue hasn't found them to be awful, everyone ignores her anyway. 

She and Jules don’t really have a group to turn to, they’re nobodies. Along with their friend Kat—a shapeshifter with an affinity for camouflage—there’s not much going on at their table. Hilariously? Kat and Maddy were friends in elementary school. It’s jarring to see them talking. 

“Why was your bus late?” Kat asks. She’s a heavier set girl, who hides under her clothes. Today she’s actually just in a hoodie, jeans and chucks, her short hair pinned out of her face. It’s been a rough morning and she feels like crap. 

“Just was,” Jules says, shrugging. “I’ll see you guys in the gym. I have to see principal Powers.” 

“Ooo, what did you do?” Kat asks, and Jules just smiles. “She’s so hot.” She giggles playfully, bucking Rue’s shoulder. 

“Shut up,” Rue snorts softly. She supposes her crush isn’t at all subtle. “She_ does _smell good though.” 

“Did I say that out loud?” Kat asks. 

“No.” Rue laughs, “I’ve been trying to block everything out all morning and I’m...tired.” 

“It’s cool.” She shoulders her bag again, as they clear the side of the school. 

_ Freak, _Rue hears. Even here, she’s a weirdo. She’s the only telepath here, which...kind of not what she needs. There hasn’t been a telepath in school since Principal Powers was a senior. 

It was extremely rare, according to her doctors, that she’d have such a powerful ability with two human parents. _ Great. _

“Are you ready for sorting?” Kat asks, “I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be a sidekick. Again. My powers aren’t going to change...I mean, we’re gonna be seniors next year.” 

“I don’t know?” Rue frowns, “I’ve never done it before remember?” 

“Right. Sorry.” 

“We have to go through this every year?” 

“Twice,” Kat snorts. She pauses and thinks of it, and Rue ends up seeing it, like a projection of a movie. It’s the same thing every year apparently. Coach Boomer drops a damn car on you, no one has been flattened yet. “Beginning of the year and second semester. I’ve been a sidekick my entire high school career.” 

Rue snorts. “I don’t really care about the label. I think...sidekick would be okay. I don’t want to save the world.” 

Kat sarcastically gasps, “What? Too much pressure?” She grins, hip-checking her as they enter the school. “Same. Listen...I’ll see you in gym later.” 

It’s still wild to Rue that they have regular classes here. But they’ll go through their day with shortened periods and everyone will gather in gym throughout the day in large portions of the populace, and be evaluated and be labeled, and then sidekicks will be assigned a hero. She doesn’t know how she’ll make it without knocking back any narcotics at all. 

.

.

.

The end of the day rolls around. She has the class with Kat, Jules, Cassie, and she’d been prepared to see Maddy. Cassie looks dejected, it doesn’t take much to deduce why— powers not necessary. Other than this class, she doesn’t see them around much. Her lunch period is right before theirs. 

Boomer has dropped plenty a chair on people for the majority of class. She’s quite bored of it really, but also really concerned that he’s allowed to do this. 

“What kind of shit is this anyway?” Rue asks her friends. 

Cassie smirks, letting out a huff of humor out her nostrils, “Wait until you actually see what we do in gym here.” 

Rue stares for a moment before nodding—the niggling feeling to take a look into her brain for the information gnaws at her insides. She doesn’t have time to really process what that means before she sees Nate walk into class. The room noticeably gets warmer. He and Jules make prolonged eye contact and everyone but Rue is off put. She hadn’t meant to, but there’s new images in her brain, mostly from Jules— an older man, near-white, salt and pepper hair; muscular, mean. She feels a flair of shame, not sure if it's the memory from Jules or the act itself, seeing images that aren’t her own, but it’s there warming her cheeks and chilling her heart. Before she can stop, and this feels gross, she gets a peek at Kat and Cassie—who both wonder when Jules and Nate have ever interacted—before drawing herself away from them. 

And then Nate, his eyes find _ hers _ and she sucks in a breath. He smirks; he knows. _ How _ does he know? He walks towards them, until the last moment when he veers off onto the bleachers, he goes all the way to the top, and she’d watched him the entire time. How did he _ know? _She swallows thickly. 

“Earth to Rue…” Jules waves her hands in her face. She chuckles, despite what Rue knows and saw. She doesn’t know the man, but she can feel that she probably doesn’t want to. 

“He hasn’t been the same…”Cassie mutters, sighing, “Not since his mom—” she stops abruptly, having said too much.

“Well, don’t stop _ there_,” Kat snorts sardonically. She looks at Rue, “His mom and brothers died.” 

“**What**?” Rue leans in, the tragedy is intriguing, and she feels gross for thinking that. She knows people die everyday—but she knows, she’s the only person she knows who’s in her kind of villain story like she is. Nate Jacobs' tragic past… blows hers out of the water. “How?”

“A fire,” Jules looks back to Boomer dropping cars on another student when his label is said aloud, _ Hero. _She'd learned this after her run-ins with the two terrible people left behind. 

Kat wonder how she knows, but ignores the urge to ask her why she does. “Everyone thought he did it.” she looks down at her lap, lounging across two rows casually. 

“He was with Maddy,” Cassie, of course, defends him. Kat and Jules are visibly exasperated, but say nothing. Though, Kat chuckles darkly. 

Rue is endlessly, morbidly curious. Knowing he has a propensity for fire? Scary. He’s a murderer and yet, in high school? She’s confused. “How is he here—”

“He didn’t do it,” Cassie shrugs, “He wasn't there, but cops found evidence of an accelerant. Why would he—”

“Jesus, are you his lawyer?” Kat teases. Rue steals a glance at Nate. He’s sitting way at the top, ankles crossed on the row below. His fingers twitch, like he’s itching to wreak havoc on the room. She tries to get in, but all she sees is nothingness. Watching his face, there’s a smirk. She can _ feel _that he’s stronger, more controlled than she is. Kat’s voice calls her attention, “Local anti-super groups all claimed they did it.” 

“Jesus Christ…” Rue mutters. 

“Yeah, He wasn’t there that day either,” Jules mutters, for the first time since the conversation started. On impulse, Rue grabs her hand. She doesn’t just mean in the fire. Jules recognizes the sympathy and gently pulls her hand free. _ Fuck_, Rue thinks. 

"Who told all this anyway?" Cassie asks Jules, face screwed up with skepticism. Jules looks caught for a few seconds. 

"I did," Kat cuts in, and shrugs her shoulders when Cassies fixes her stare on her. Maddy will hear of this, undoubtedly. Hilariously, she's a hero too. And mad about it, because she and Nate can't be paired for the semester. No one will be shocked when he's assigned a sidekick. Pyrokinesis itself? Amazing, add his ability to generate elements from his fingertips—though still untapped really—he's never going to be someone's lackey. 

“Bennett…” Boomer calls, “The Newbie,” He announces. Rue’s eyes widen at the callout, the entire room of students look to her. 

“Goodluck,” Cassie and Kat say in unison. Jules is visibly sunken, but pulls herself together enough to offer a nod. 

The short walk to the platform steps makes Rue’s throat dry up and her palms sweat. And she feels herself shaking. She thought accepting her abilities would help with her crushing anxieties, but not quite, apparently. She needs to talk to Dr. Aina about this. 

“_Just breathe, kid,” _Boomer’s inner voice echoes in her head, and she exhales with relief that he seems none the wiser. She needs to get a handle on this—the mental fatigue at this hour, since she’s gotten here is not good. The fight to not pop a pill is even worse. The sweat on her brow is from craving. “What’re you hoping for?”

_ Sudden invisibility. _

Before she can answer aloud, he hits the trigger on the car rig, dropping it from above. She crashes to the platform, beneath the vehicle; it bounces on it's wheels, leaving enough room( which _ is _intentional). 

“SIDEKICK!” 

That doesn’t actually feel like the worst news she’s received today.

  
  



End file.
